Earlier this month, Katie and I had the opportunity to present at CampFI Rocky Mountain (week 2.5) about our journey after reaching financial independence. We talked about our experiment with “slomadic” living, spending several months at a time in different parts of the country while trying to figure out what we want this next phase of life to look like.

Typically, people ask us about the logistics. How do we find housing? What do we do about mail? How do we handle healthcare, taxes, or travel rewards?  Those are interesting questions, but they aren’t really the biggest lessons we’ve learned. For this presentation we decided to focus on four themes that kept showing up over and over again throughout our journey. They have influenced almost every major decision we’ve made this year.

More Than One Right Answer

I love the Financial Independence movement, but the focus on optimization can lead to analysis paralysis.  Plus, as teachers, Katie and I are well aware of the multiple choice mentality that has conditioned many of us to believe that every question just has one correct answer.

Luckily, life doesn’t work that way. Should you pay off your house or invest? Retire early or keep working? Move across the country or stay close to family? The answer is often, “Yes :)”  

One of the most freeing ideas we’ve embraced is that decisions are rarely binary.  There are usually several good choices. We can be happy choosing A, B, OR C.  Once we accept that, decision-making becomes much easier.  We spend a lot less time trying to optimize every single variable and more time asking whether a choice fits the life that we are trying to build.

Freedom Is Better Than Wealth

This may be the biggest surprise of our FI journey. Looking back, many of our best financial decisions weren’t really about maximizing money. They were about maximizing options.

Katie left a higher-paying corporate career because education gave us work we enjoyed and schedules that fit our family. Later, side hustles, teaching online, and consulting gave us even more flexibility. Instead of making one giant leap into retirement, we gradually reduced the work we no longer enjoyed while keeping the parts that were still meaningful.  

The crazy thing?  In chasing freedom, the money followed naturally.  Financial independence didn’t simply increase our net worth. It increased our ability to say yes to opportunities (and our ability to say no). That has turned out to be far more valuable than just chasing dollars.

Simple Is Better Than Complex

If you’ve followed this blog for very long, you’ve probably noticed this theme already.

Simple investments. Simple travel. Simple spending. Simple housing.

I enjoy reading about complicated financial strategies just as much as the next FI nerd, but I’ve learned that complexity often creates more opportunities for mistakes. The same has been true in our personal lives. I can understand the appeal of real estate investment or the concept of RV travel, but the devil is in the details.  In both cases there are just too many variables and opportunities for friction for us right now.  We’ve realized we don’t need a large house, multiple properties, elaborate travel plans, or a complicated investment portfolio to be happy.

Simple systems free up mental energy for the things that actually matter.

Zero-Based Thinking

This has probably become our favorite mental model. Every once in a while, we like to ask ourselves a simple question:

“Knowing what we know today, would we make the same decision again?”

Sometimes the answer is yes, but sometimes it isn’t.

I really enjoyed teaching at the university, but after COVID permanently shifted the bulk of the teaching online, it no longer fit what I wanted to do. The four bedroom house by the elementary school and across the street from the community pool was perfect while raising kids, but isn’t the house two empty nesters need today.  The dependable sedan was great for commuting in city traffic, but not ideal for cross country moves.

Even our current experiment with slow travel is really just one long exercise in zero-based thinking. Instead of assuming we know where we want to spend retirement, we’re intentionally testing different possibilities before making another long-term commitment.

Looking Ahead

When we accepted CampFI’s invitation to speak, my first draft had us spending most of our time talking about geo-arbitrage, budgeting, and logistics.  Instead, we found ourselves talking about philosophy. How do you make decisions? How do you define success? What kind of life are you actually trying to build?

I hope the presentation was helpful for the people who attended, but I also hope these four ideas are useful for anyone pursuing financial independence, whether retirement is five years away or fifty.  After all, FI isn’t just about accumulating enough money to stop working. It’s about building a life that gives you the freedom to make the choices that matter most.